A synthesis of research on second language writing in english

It is intended for L2 writing researchers world-wide, L2 writing practitioners, graduate students in TESOL methods courses, L1 English writing professionals and practitioners, and gradua

exer-John Hedgcock, Monterey Institute for International Studies

“The authors command the field in ways that perhaps no one else does Their vast collective knowledge shines on every page.”

Barbara Kroll, University of Southern California

Synthesizing twenty-five years of the most significant and influential findings of published research on second language writing in English, this volume promotes understanding and provides access to research developments in the field Overall,

it distinguishes the major contexts of English L2 learning in North America; thesizes the research themes, issues, and findings that span these contexts; and interprets the methodological progression and substantive findings of this body of knowledge Of particular interest is the extensive bibliography, which makes this volume an essential reference tool for libraries and serious writing professionals, both researchers and practitioners, both L1 and L2.

syn-This book is designed to help researchers become familiar with the most important research on this topic; to promote understanding of pedagogical needs

of L2 writing students; and to introduce graduate students to L2 writing research findings.

Ilona Leki is professor of English, directs the English as a Second Language program

at the University of Tennessee, and is chair of the University’s Interdisciplinary Program in Linguistics.

Alister Cumming is professor and Head of the Modern Language Centre,

Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning, Ontario Institute for Studies

in Education, University of Toronto.

Tony Silva is professor and Director of the ESL Writing Program, Department

of English, Purdue University.

A Synthesis of Research on Second Language Writing in English

First published 2008

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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Leki, Ilona.

A synthesis of research on second language writing in English/Ilona Leki, Alister Cumming and Tony Silva.

p cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978–0–8058–5532–6 (hb: alk paper) — ISBN 978–0–8058–5533–3 (pb: alk paper) — ISBN 978–0–203–93025–0 (ebook: alk paper)

1 English language—Study and teaching—Foreign speakers 2 English language—Composition and exercises—Study and teaching—Foreign speakers 3 Second language acquisition I Cumming, Alister H II Silva, Tony III Title.

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008.

“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s

collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”

ISBN 0-203-93025-8 Master e-book ISBN

To my beautiful and growing family

4 Graduate Student Writing 37

5 L2 Adult Newcomer, Resettlement, and

instruction and Assessment 67

9 Curriculum and Instruction 71

13 Written Text: Textual issues 139

14 Written Text: Grammatical Issues 165Afterword: Future Directions 200

A Synthesis of Research on Second Language Writing in English is a

topi-cal introduction to research in the explosively growing field of second language (L2) writing The book is intended to provide access to the enormous and rapidly evolving research literature for specialist, veteran researchers, for graduate students new to the field, and for teacher educa-tors and program administrators The three such compendiums that exist for first language (L1) writing in English—covering 20 years each from

1942 to 1962 (Braddock, Lloyd-Jones, & Schoer, 1963), 1962 to 1982 (Hillocks, 1986), and 1983 to 2002, which includes for the first time a chapter on L2 writing (Smagorinsky, 2006)—have been essential reading for L1 writing professionals With the present volume we hope to provide the same service to L2 writing professionals

The book is a thematically organized synthesis of 20 years of published research on L2 writing in English, but it is neither a simple bibliography nor an annotated bibliography Rather it is an interpretive, narrative syn-thesis of published research, that is, an analytical discussion of the most significant and influential findings of the past 20 years designed to promote understanding of L2 writing in English and to provide access to research developments in the field It is intended for L2 writing researchers world-wide, L2 writing practitioners, graduate students in TESOL methods courses, L1 English writing professionals and practitioners, and graduate students in teacher education courses in literacy development, as well

as writing centers serving the growing number of L2 writers using those services Overall, the book distinguishes the major contexts of English L2 learning in North America, synthesizes the research themes, issues, and findings that span these contexts, and interprets the methodological progression and substantive findings of this body of knowledge

Other compendium volumes provide different coverage of L2 ing research Three bibliographies of L2 writing exist but are now more than a decade out of date: Schechter and Harklau (1991), Silva, Brice, and Reichelt (1999), and Tannacito (1995) Other overview books on the topic of L2 writing include Grabe and Kaplan (1996) and Casanave’s

writ-x Preface

(2004) coverage of controversies in L2 writing, introductory textbooks for initial or inservice teacher education (e.g Ferris & Hedgcock, 2005; Hedge, 1988; K Hyland, 2003b; Leki, 1992; Reid 1993), edited col-lections of articles on distinct topics (e.g Kroll, 2003; Matsuda, Cox, Jordan, & Ortmeier-Hooper, 2006; Silva & Matsuda, 2002), and stud-ies of specialized subtopics related to L2 writing, including the recent University of Michigan Press series on L2 writing (e.g Benesch, 2001, and Canagarajah, 2002a, on critical pedagogy; Casanave, 2004, on con-troversies in L2 writing; Connor, 1996, on contrastive rhetoric; D Ferris,

2002, 2003, and L Goldstein, 2005, on responding to writing; Johns,

1997, on genre; Liu & Hansen, 2002, on peer responding; Weigle, 2002,

on assessment) In 2006 Written Communication published a summary

of research articles on writing tallied by educational context, which bines L1 and L2 studies, over the past 5 years (vol 23, no 4) Both Norris and Ortega’s (2006) and Cummins and Davison’s (2007) edited volumes employ meta-analysis and other syntheses of research on L2 language

com-teaching and learning more generally By contrast, A Synthesis of Research

on Second Language Writing in English contributes a comprehensive,

topically focused, scholarly review of research on L2 writing, tracing the impact of significant research developments in the discipline Of particu-lar interest is the extensive bibliography, which we hope will make it an essential reference tool for libraries and serious writing professionals, both researchers and practitioners, both L1 and L2

The synthesis is divided into three sections:

I Contexts for L2 Writing reviews research on L2 writers’ responses

to the tasks confronting them in school settings from elementary through graduate school (chapters 1–4), outside school settings in the community, workplace, and professional environments (chapters 5–7), and in the context of the ideological issues surrounding and permeating L2 writing in English in North America (chapter 8)

II Instruction and Assessment focuses on pedagogical issues grounded

in theoretical foundations and teacher orientations (chapter 9) and

on assessment issues within both courses and institutions (chapter 10)

III Basic Research on Second Language Writing reviews basic empirical

research on L2 writers (chapter 11), their composing processes(chapter 12), their texts at the discourse level (chapter 13), and their texts at the sentence level (chapter 14)

A Note about Authorship

Given the different material treated, the approach taken to each section has necessarily varied Section I provides a somewhat linear trajectory,

Preface xi

moving from early descriptions of L2 writer needs to emerging ings of the contexts of L2 writing Section II provides a state-of-the-art approach grounded in consideration of the background to these current conditions Section III leads researchers to published reports of research focused within particular parameters, dealing with particular focal areas,

understand-or coming to particular conclusions of interest to L2 writing researchers Motivated in part by the quite disparate nature of the topics addressed

in each section and our independent analyses of the pertinent research literature, we have not attempted to blend our distinctive writing styles in order to produce a single voice

This volume grew out of an invitation to contribute a chapter on L2

writ-ing for Peter Smagorinsky’s Research on Composition (2006) Although

we were most pleased to be able to participate in that work, as we pared our chapter it became increasingly obvious that a single chapter could not do justice to the range and volume of research published on L2 writing in recent times Thus, some of the research reviewed here was discussed in much reduced form in that volume We would like to thank Peter both for his interest in including L2 writing for the first time in the substantive reviews of L1 writing research of which his edition was a continuation and for the inspiration to develop this one We also thank three anonymous reviewers of our initial manuscript for providing espe-cially appreciative, thoughtful, and useful analyses, which helped to shape the present version of the book For help with collecting the research reviewed here, our thanks to Sue Chang, Tony Cimasko, Noke Glass, Tom Glass, Ethan Krase, Karyn Mallett, Robert Nelson, Laurel Reinking, Anne Snellen, and Yufeng Zhang Our heartfelt thanks to Naomi Silverman, our editor at Routledge, for her limitless patience And thanks to the support staff from Erlbaum and Routledge, particularly to Andrew R Davidson for his painstaking care in copy-editing the volume

The field of L2 writing in English, while still relatively young, has clearly come of age The last 25 years have seen several firsts in L2 writing

research: the first journal devoted exclusively to L2 writing (the Journal

of Second Language Writing); the first book linking L2 reading and writing

(Carson & Leki, 1993); the first book focusing on adult education and L2 English (Burnaby & Cumming, 1992); the first book on what is being called Generation 1.5, that is, high school immigrant students (Harklau, Losey, & Siegal, 1999); the first bibliographies of published work (Silva, Brice, & Reichelt, 1999; Tannacito, 1995); the first conferences devoted exclusively to L2 writing (Purdue Symposium on Second Language Writing and others) Several accounts of the history of L2 writing peda-gogy and of the discipline itself document the development and growing importance of L2 writing studies as a field of practice and investigation (See for example Blanton, 1995; Cumming, 1998, 2001b; Kaplan, 2000; Matsuda, 1998, 1999, 2003c, 2003d; Matsuda, Canagarajah, Harklau, Hyland, & Warschauer, 2003; Raimes, 1991; Silva, 1990, 1993; Silva & Brice, 2004; Silva & Matsuda, 2002.)

So many L2 writing subfields have evolved, in fact, and with such ity that it has become difficult for area specialists to stay abreast of findings

rapid-in subdisciplrapid-inary areas outside their expertise As an obvious example, a great deal of L2 writing research has focused on aspects of undergradu-ate writing in English-medium institutions Increasing numbers of these students in North America are immigrants and coming to university study

as graduates of U.S and Canadian high schools Yet university researchers and practitioners are often not familiar with the research on L2 writing

in, for example, secondary schools

Writers for whom English is not their first or strongest language ate North American society and respond to writing demands in contexts from kindergarten to graduate school and from professional publishing

perme-to community literacy and adult education programs Research on these writers in North America was sporadic until the beginning of the 1980s

At about that time, the influence on L2 writing of audiolingual methods of

2 Introduction

teaching language, with their focus on grammatical patterns, had waned and been replaced by a pedagogy encouraging the examination and imita-tion of model texts Thus, in terms of research into L2 writing what little there was consisted primarily of text analyses such as contrastive rhetoric studies, needs analyses, and error analyses

Research into L1 student writing processes had been inaugurated with Emig’s (1971) study of high school writers and began in L2 in the 1980s,

in particular with Zamel’s (1983) and then Raimes’ (1985) “case studies” showing that, like L1 writers, L2 students also tried to and could express meanings rather than just manipulate language but struggled with writ-ing, needing more time, more vocabulary, “more of everything” (Raimes,

1985, p 250) In the meantime, interest in English for Specific Purposes (which has subsequently and partially morphed into an interest in genre studies) grew steadily (Horowitz, 1986a, 1986b), continuing the docu-mentation of text, situation, and needs analyses to determine the types of tasks L2 writers would eventually face and studies of contrastive rhetoric aimed at discovering the different culturally determined rhetorical start-ing points from which L2 writers approached English texts

One of the first book-length collections on L2 writing focused, as has the majority of research published since then, on L2 writers at the tertiary level and argued for the de-ghettoization of English as a Second Language (ESL) learners (Benesch, 1988); another, an ethnographic study, researched child bilingual writers, arguing for more respect and more meaningful writing opportunities for these children (Edelsky, 1986)

Around the early 1990s the number of published reports of research began to balloon Early interest in needs analyses, instructional interven-tions, text analyses, and learner processes continued, but research con-cerns expanded toward writing construed both more broadly and more socially: studies of identity issues in relation to L2 writing, in particular learning to write in the former colonial language; of workplace writing;

of writing by special populations such as children and graduate students (although high school students’ writing has still received relatively little attention); of the effects of immigration (and interruptions to formal schooling for refugees during resettlement) on L2 writing development More cognitively focused interests continued as well into research on such issues as the effect of L1 writing proficiency on L2 writing; of L1 literacy instruction on L2 literacy development; of L2 language proficiency on L2 writing; of knowledge storage in one language and knowledge retrieval

in another

A new thread was initiated, or at least brought into focus, by Santos’ (1992) article discussing the absence in ESL and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) writing instruction of the political agenda so salient in L1 publications on writing This observation brought swift counterassertions that ESL/EFL was inherently political and resulted in a foregrounding

Introduction 3

of the role of critical pedagogy in L2 writing (Benesch, 1993; Severino, 1993) The context for thinking about L2 writing expanded from deter-mining how to develop and deliver instruction suitable for and useful

to L2 learners to examining the effect of English language teaching (ELT) worldwide The global ELT project came under critical scrutiny as researchers explored the (often negative) effects of the spread of English, driven in part by old colonialist structures, on other cultures, societies, and languages And, as Kroll (2003) has argued, as English-dominant societies are increasingly driven by literacy and digital literacy, “the pur-suit of English entails a pursuit of written English” (p 1)

Nevertheless, pedagogical issues inevitably continue to direct much L2 writing research Researchers hope to answer still unanswered questions about appropriate and effective responses to L2 writing; the role of cul-ture and its influence on L2 writers; the role of L1 literacy development and language planning in countries worldwide in the development of L2 literacy; the emerging role of postmodernism, feminism, gay and lesbian studies, race studies, and class issues in the discipline; the question of imposing English-based literacy values, such as avoiding plagiarism and developing a personal voice and “critical thinking” in L2 writers

Through this foment, L2 writing research has become progressively better informed, theoretically and methodologically Researchers now typically use mixed designs (qualitative and quantitative), reflecting an increased breadth and depth of knowledge Early interests in texts and cognitive processes have expanded from simple to more complex per-spectives that consider broad-based, social understandings and more inclusive images of L2 writing and writers As a result, our understand-ing of learning to write in a second language “has expanded and refined conceptualizations of (a) the qualities of texts that learners produce, (b) the processes of students’ composing, and, increasingly, (c) the specific sociocultural contexts in which this learning occurs” and helped us to see the “multi-faceted nature of second-language writing and the extensive variability associated both with literacy and with languages internation-ally” (Cumming, 2001b, p 1) As Silva and Matsuda (2002) noted, these understandings have inevitably entailed more complex and careful con-sideration of pedagogical and assessment issues in L2 literacy

More broadly, understandings of literacy itself have become siderably more sophisticated Cumming cites the work of Hornberger (1989) and Hornberger and Skilton-Sylvester (2000) as demonstrating that “biliteracy varies along several continua—personally, interperson-ally, culturally, and geographically—in terms of the characteristics and development of individuals, contexts of language use, relations of status and power, and facets of communication media” (Cumming, 2001b, pp 9–10) Literacy is thus currently viewed by many researchers as more than simply a cognitive process resulting in an individual skill, what Brian

con-4 Introduction

Street has called “autonomous literacy” (1984) Street’s argument was that by itself literacy could not autonomously confer benefits to individu-als or societies outside particular valuings of particular kinds of literacy For example, multiple literacies in different languages are valued differ-entially depending on the status of the languages in question and their speakers, as are multiliteracies, that is, literacy in different modalities, such as computer literacy, visual literacy (New London Group, 1996),

or comic book literacy (Norton & Vanderheyden, 2004) In this sense literacy is not only multi or multiple and not merely social or culturally embedded but also ideological, since, if literacies are valued differently, then literacy inevitably indexes power differentials; that is, the literacies

of the less powerful elements of society may not even be valued as literacy

at all (e.g comic book literacy or literacy in a nondominant language

or one not highly socially esteemed) The question Street raises is how

to implement New Literacy Studies’ understandings of literacy in cational contexts (Street, 2005), a question especially significant for L2 writing scholars

edu-Perhaps as a sign of the maturing of a discipline, and of a growing est in personal narratives at least in part stimulated by feminist research methods and their influence on L1 writing research, an increasing amount

inter-of the metadisciplinary discourse has recently begun to document L2 fessionals’ reflections on teaching and learning L2 writing These writers have examined and written about the nature of their own experiences either of becoming L2 writing professionals (Blanton & Kroll, 2002; Casanave & Vandrick, 2003) or of going from being L2 English learn-ers to accomplished professionals and teachers of writing to both other non-native English speakers (NNESs) and native English speakers (NESs) (Belcher & Connor, 2001; Braine, 1999b) These kinds of reflections on L2 writing have both created and been created by a broadened perspec-tive on the discipline (Silva & Leki, 2004), one that has been termed and explored as the opening of a postprocess era in L2 writing See Brauer (2000) as well as articles by Atkinson (2003a, on the idea of postpro-cess, 2003b on culture and writing), K Hyland (2003a on genre), Kubota (2003 on issues of gender, class, and race), Matsuda (2003c on disciplin-ary history), Casanave (2003 on sociopolitical issues), and Leki (2003a

pro-on interdisciplinary issues) in the special issue of the Journal of Secpro-ond

Language Writing, guest edited by Atkinson (vol 12, no 1, 2003).

Reflecting the maturation of the discipline, this book is organized to explore three main topic areas: contexts for writing; curriculum, instruc-tion, and assessment; and basic research on L2 writing We feel this approach broadly accounts for the research on L2 writers interacting with contexts, with instruction, and with texts over the 25-year span consid-ered here, although we recognize that the body of literature examined in this volume might also have been divided in other ways

Introduction 5

i: contexts for L2 Writing

This section on contexts for writing reflects recent understandings of literacy as ideological The section explores the broad situational issues shaping the development of L2 writing and impacting on the experiences

of L2 writers Drawing on information about the writers themselves and their experiences from case studies, surveys, questionnaires, and inter-views, the research reviewed traces some of the settings of L2 writing

at the whole-person level, the struggles and motivations of writers, the contextual and situational obstacles they face, and the strategies they have used to overcome them Generally, studies were excluded from this section if the L2 writers or the settings they worked in were essentially anonymous and were included when the research personalized the writers and writing contexts This section incorporates work on child L2 writers; L2 writers in secondary schools; undergraduate L2 writers; L2 writers

in graduate school; L2 writers in community, resettlement, and adult education settings; L2 writers in the workplace; L2 writers in academic, scholarly, or professional contexts; and identity issues that arise for L2 writers as well as political, sociopolitical, and ideological issues embedded

in L2 writing

ii: curriculum, instruction, and Assessment

This section highlights and synthesizes the educational issues appearing across the various contexts investigated in research on L2 writing The first chapter in this section (chapter 9) addresses curricular and instruc-tional issues These focus on the conceptual foundations of L2 writing curricula, including theoretical orientations and teachers’ pedagogical knowledge A second focus has been on the varied purposes and policy contexts of L2 writing curricula and means of organizing them: for example, through benchmark standards, the integration or separation of writing from other curriculum components, aspects of writing taught, and studies of instructional interactions The second chapter in this section (chapter 10) reviews research on the assessment of L2 writing Studies of formative assessment have considered pedagogical issues such as describ-ing teachers’ practices for responding to L2 students’ writing and analyses

of their effects, different media and modes of responding, and peer- and self-assessment Studies of proficiency assessment have focused on issues related to institutional policies and the design and validity of formal tests

of L2 writing, including analyses of the L2 discourse written for tests and

of raters’ processes for evaluating L2 writing

6 Introduction

iii: Basic Research on Writers, Their composing

Processes, and Their Texts

This section constitutes a synthesis of the findings of reports of empirical research on second language writing published between 1980 and 2005 The focus is on basic research: that is, inquiry into the phenomenon of L2 writing, as opposed to a focus on L2 writing instruction or assessment—which are addressed in section II The section includes four chapters: The first, chapter 11, focuses on L2 writer variables (for example, L2 writing ability, L2 proficiency, and L2 writing development); the second, chapter

12, looks at L2 composing processes (for example, planning, formulating, and revising); the third, chapter 13, examines discoursal issues in the L2 writers’ texts (for example, cohesion, organizational patterns, and tex-tual modes and aims); and the fourth, chapter 14, addresses grammatical issues in L2 writers’ texts (for example, parts of speech or form classes, sentence elements, and sentence processes) Additionally, each chapter includes a discussion of the breadth and depth of the research reported

on in that chapter The section also includes an appendix: two tables, one alphabetical by author, the other chronological, listing all of the studies analyzed, which provide author names, publication dates, sample sizes, subjects’ first language(s), and subjects’ second language(s) The section is meant to be used primarily as a reference work, pointing to studies and findings relevant to a particular area or subarea of interest—as a sort of prose database

The need to place some kind of boundary around the research to be synthesized here has unfortunately meant making choices about what to exclude For example, although we recognize the importance of read-ing to writing, we decided not to include the literature that made that connection unless it substantially focused on writing rather than reading Furthermore, covering L2 writing in English alone meant covering a great deal of ground; attempting to include studies of writing in all languages internationally would have created problems in accessing material (and have exceeded our own language resources) In generally limiting our-selves to L2 English writing in North America, furthermore, we have not systematically reviewed the extensive literature on the Australian Sydney School and its teaching of power genres (see Belcher, 2004); the growing literature on foreign language writing, including English (see Reichelt, 2001; see also the online database CLEAR at Michigan State University); the work of L2 English writing researchers associated with Lancaster University/BALEAP (see Lea & Street, 1998); or the relatively newly formed European Association of Teachers of Academic Writing (EATAW) Consequently, any conclusions we may draw here cannot be assumed to apply outside the North American or L2 English context We encour-age others to take on the task of synthesizing writing done in languages

Introduction 7

other than English or in locales other than English-dominant regions of North America We have, however, occasionally cited work from outside North America or outside our designated time frame when an issue under discussion required it

Section I

Contexts for L2 Writing

Since the early 1980s the L2 writing profession has increasingly edged that it is counterproductive to analyze English learners’ writing

acknowl-or language development without embedding the inquiry in the human, material, institutional, and political contexts where they occur This sec-tion on Contexts for L2 Writing is predicated on views of language use and education as the enactments of particular discourses (Gee, 1996, 2005) Taking an ecological view of activities, human agency, and contexts as enmeshed and woven together, the approach in this section has been to describe the contexts in which L2 writers write by constructing a loosely thematic narrative based on the study of the individuals and groups who have been the focus of L2 writing research in the last 25 years

Some of the categories selected for inclusion in this section presented themselves as obvious to such an endeavor, for example, the chapter covering research on L2 undergraduates in North American universities

In other cases, categories that incorporated a body of literature were included even when that body was relatively small, for example, the chapter on workplace writing; though a relatively small category in L2, nevertheless the context of writing in the workplace presents an intrigu-ing and important intersection of concerns for L2 writing professionals Finally, in some cases, such as L2 writing in secondary schools, research

on writing itself could not be properly discussed without consideration

of the institutional, social, cultural, and affective contexts in which the writing was embedded

Any discussion of L2 writers requires an acknowledgement that it is difficult to come to a decision about how to refer to them, or indeed, whom to include in the discussion Terms referring to these writers such

as English as a Second Language (ESL), English as an Additional Language (EAL), bilingual, multilingual, and others are each inappropriate in some ways for the many varieties of writers that might be included here However, since some term is required, we have for the most part settled upon L2 writers as one of the more neutral

10 A Synthesis of Research on Second Language Writing in English

Chapters 2, 3, 4, and 5 group writers working in educational contexts, prekindergarten through graduate school in English-medium institu-tions in North America The students in each of these levels of education might be grouped differently, for example by legal status as visa students versus more permanent residents, and these different categorizations would unquestionably have led to a different kind of synthesis of the literature The decision was made to group these writers instead by the educational context in which they worked and lived and consequently

by the literacy demands encountered there We nevertheless recognize that these demands are inevitably perceived, experienced, and responded

to differently depending in part on the students’ length of residence in the target community, intended length of residence, language proficiency, educational background, and a host of other factors so disparate as to make the resulting discussion too diffuse to be useful to understand the phenomenon of L2 writing In categorizing research by writing context

we are also making a claim about the importance and impact of context

on all individuals and hoping at the same time to avoid the knotty issue of dividing people themselves into categories

The next section (chapters 6, 7, and 8) examines the literature on L2 English writing outside classrooms, in the community, the workplace, and the professional settings of scholarly publications in English The role of writing in these contexts varies widely, and the accomplishment of writ-ing tasks is less individual and often more widely distributed among the members of the social or professional group Finally, permeating all these previous contexts are the broader sociopolitical dimensions of L2 writing

in English The literature on these dimensions encompasses some of the social identities of these writers and examines the political and ideologi-cal climate surrounding L2 writing in English and the influence of that climate on pedagogical practices and disciplinary and societal attitudes

is experienced by young L2 learners in Toohey, 1998, 2000, and Hawkins,

2005, and the influence of school programs on beginning writers in Edelsky, 1996.)

Researchers of the 1980s were well aware of the differences between early L1 writing and early L2 writing among children First, unlike L1 writers, L2 writers may have little oral language to draw upon in develop-ing literacy, and thus are not and cannot be moving from oral to written forms in their writing development, an analysis often offered in discussing L1 beginning writers The second significant potential difference is that L2 beginning readers and writers may already be literate to some degree

in L1 and can therefore potentially rely partially on that literacy both to create texts and to advance their developing L2 literacy (Edelsky, 1986).Nevertheless, because many of the efforts of researchers in the 1980s were specifically focused on improving instruction, including in bilingual education programs, their initial apparent mission was to show

1 that beginning L2 writers were much like beginning L1 writers and that

2 in supportive, meaning-oriented writing contexts, beginning L2 writers brought with them and were able to draw upon a variety of resources and strategies to successfully create expressive texts that communicated meaning (Ammon, 1985; Blanton, 1998, 2002; Edelsky, 1986, 1989; Genishi, Stires, & Yung-Chan, 2001; Han & Ernst-Slavit, 1999; Hudelson, 1989a; Peyton, 1990; Urzua, 1986, 1987)

12 Contexts for L2 Writing

Like beginning L1 writers, L2 writers were also observed to use invented spellings (Edelsky, 1986; Hudelson, 1989a); to use marks (such

as drawings) other than letters to supplement texts (Blanton, 1998; Han

& Ernst-Slavit, 1999; Hudelson, 1989a; Huss, 1995); to show awareness that print conveys meanings (Hudelson, 1984); to respond positively to opportunities to write (Hudelson, 1984, 1989a, 1989b); to use writing for a variety of purposes, including non-narrative writing (Early, 1990), and to shift stances for different audiences (Edelsky, 1986; Hudelson,

1984, 1986; Urzua, 1987); to demonstrate the ability to look at text as text and critically evaluate it (Samway, 1993); and to exhibit a general sense of what writing looks like, including across different script systems, for example, knowing that Arabic is written right to left rather than left to right (Huss, 1995) or that Chinese characters have a particular boxy look (Buckwalter & Lo, 2002) Much of this research worked against prevail-ing dogma and served to debunk such myths as the following notions:L2 writers must learn to speak before learning to read or write

•

Rather, young learners may feel more comfortable writing and be more willing to write than speak (Hudelson, 1984, 1986; Saville-Troike, 1984); furthermore, their writing differs from their speech even in early stages (Edelsky, 1986)

L2 writers must learn to read before they can write Instead learners

have little effect (Elley, 1994; Saville-Troike, 1984)

Reliance on L1 serves only to confuse children and so should be

•

discouraged Rather, L1 has been shown to be an important resource (Carlisle, 1989; Dávila de Silva, 2004; Hudelson, 1989a; Long, 1998; Moll, Saez, & Dworkin, 2001; Saville-Troike, 1984)

Because writing is a solitary affair and an individual cognitive

•

achievement, children should each work to develop their writing abilities and texts individually Instead, children have been shown to work best with the timely help of peers and teachers (Blanton, 1998, 2002; Clark, 1995; Dávila de Silva, 2004; Early, 1990; Goodman, 1984; Hudelson, 1986; Urzua, 1987)

Research in the 1980s and early 1990s also supported a drive away from copying texts in lieu of creating them, filling in blanks instead of writing more extended language, and encouraging (or forcing) children to function in only the target language instead of making use of L1 borrow-ing or code-switching strategies (Early, 1990; Edelsky, 1986; Elley, 1994;

Young Writers 13

Francis, 2000) It also generally supported Whole Language approaches (Edelsky, 1996; Freeman & Freeman, 1989; Hudelson, 1989a, 1989b; Kitagawa, 1989; Westerbrook & Bergquist-Moody, 1996), the notion that writing helps develop other language and social skills (Hudelson, 1984; Urzua, 1987), and the potential importance of teachers’ roles (Francis, 2000; Goodman, 1984)

Although case studies were not infrequent, because the thrust of this research was to argue a position, or at least minimally to describe contexts that promoted literacy acquisition in this population, the emphasis was somewhat synchronic, looking at groups of young writers often within bilingual programs (Ammon, 1985; Edelsky, 1982, 1986; Geva & Wade-Woolley, 1998) Nevertheless, a consistent finding in these studies was the wide variation shown between individual young writers and individual pieces of writing by the same child (Hudelson, 1986; Saville-Troike, 1984) Perrotta (1994) offered a useful summary of the positions that researchers were taking for granted by the beginning of the 1990s At the end of the 1990s a report sponsored by a series of government, health, and education agencies (addressing reading rather than writing, however) reviewed the research to date on schooling and literacy generally for L2 students (August & Hakuta, 1997)

In this body of literature, as in others focused on writing, the 1990s saw

a “social turn” (Trimbur, 1994), on one hand, and on the other a more chronic focus with greater emphasis on the complicated paths that writing skill development took with individual children and on the way writing skills interacted with identity, positioning, and variations in familial or cultural orientations (Edelsky, 1996; Goodman, 1984; Hudelson, 1986; Hunter, 1997; Maguire & Graves, 2001; Solsken, Willett, & Wilson-Keenan, 2000; Volk & de Acosta, 2003) Recurring themes through 2005 centered around the importance to writing of talk, including talking to

dia-one’s self; this meant not learning to talk before writing, as had been

promoted in the 1970s, but using oral interaction to scaffold text struction and model texts (Gutierrez, 1994; Han & Ernst-Slavit, 1999; Patthey-Chavez & Clare, 1996) and to build influential social relations with peers and teachers (Blanton, 2002; Day, 2002; Gutierrez, 1994; Hawkins, 2005; Hunter, 1997; Huss, 1995; Long, 1998; Maguire, 1997; Nassaji & Cumming, 2000) McCarthey, Garcia, Lopez-Velasquez, Lin,

con-& Guo (2004) found that the lack of opportunity to talk (between dents and teachers and among teachers) about expectations for writing tasks and topics led some young English learners to transfer L1 schooling understandings about writing to their English learning context in ways that were not particularly helpful, for example, believing that care in handwriting and forming letters was highly valued

stu-Writing was also seen as a means of allowing children to explore and make connections between home or native culture and school or target culture (Edelsky, 1996; Han & Ernst-Slavit, 1999; Long, 1998; Maguire,

14 Contexts for L2 Writing

1997; Maguire & Graves, 2001; Masny & Ghahremani-Ghajar, 1999; Patthey-Chavez & Clare, 1996) In addition, examining children’s journal writing became less an exercise in discovering the nature of L2 beginning writers’ texts, as it had been in earlier research, and more a means of moni-toring these writers’ social, educational, and cultural adjustment experi-ences (Gutierrez, 1994; Kreeft, Shuy, Staton, Reed, & Morroy, 1984; Maguire & Graves, 2001; Nassaji & Cumming, 2000; Peyton, 1993) In contrast to the previous several years of research, with those assessments came also a recognition of the frustration experienced by these children

as they lost self-confidence in their literate abilities and developed a sense

of their own incompetence (Platt & Troudi, 1997), causing in some cases

a loss of interest in extended reading and writing for school (Han & Ernst-Slavit, 1999; Long, 1998), though not necessarily in self-initiated writing (Long, 1998) (Similar findings occur for high school students and community writers; see for example Fu, 1995, and Guerra, 1998.)

As sociocultural theories came to predominate over more mental and cognitive orientations, the roles and attitudes of teachers in particular were considered critical in delimiting or opening literacy possi-bilities for the children (Gutierrez, 1994; Masny & Ghahremani-Ghajar, 1999; Platt & Troudi, 1997) See also Toohey (1998, 2000) and Toohey and Day (1999); although not focused on literacy development specifi-cally, this research richly contextualizes sample environments in which child literacy develops in schools In recognition of the importance of teachers, L2 child writing researchers began also to urge that both teach-ers and administrators learn more about the cultural and family back-grounds of L2 students in their classes (Masny & Ghahremani-Ghajar,

develop-1999; McCarthey, 2002; McCarthey et al., 2004) and exercise particular

critical vigilance so as not to be led by dominant school-based discourses

to undervalue the hybridity of young writers’ texts as they weave social and personal agendas and varying background cultures into their writing (Solsken, Willett, & Wilson-Keenan, 2000) Trends in the early 2000s have converged around the examination of how writing develops in biliterate children and how being bilingual affects literacy development in both languages, in other words, the examination not of the similarities between monolingual and bilingual beginning writers but of their differences, with the differences viewed as advantages rather than as deficits (Buckwalter &

Lo, 2002; Durgunoglu, 1998; Durgunoglu, Mir, & Arino-Martin, 2002; Francis, 2000; Reynolds, 2002) See especially Perez (2004a) for a useful discussion of L1/L2 literacy development in children from a variety of L1 backgrounds

An important line of research traces the influence that opportunities and encouragements to write a variety of texts in mainstream (Au, 1993; Gutierrez, 1992; Moll, Saez, & Dworkin, 2001; Reyes, 1992) and heri-tage language schools and at home exert on nascent L2 literacy, on the

Young Writers 15

continued development of L1 literacy, and on children’s attitudes toward

writing in L1 and L2 (McCarthey & Garcia, 2005; McCarthey et al., 2004;

McCarthey, Guo, & Cummins 2005; Xu, 1999) with successes reported particularly in school contexts that encouraged writing in both (or more) languages (Manyak, 2001; Moll, Saez, & Dworkin, 2001) Biliterate chil-

dren demonstrated a range of literacy competencies inside (McCarthey

et al., 2004) and outside school contexts and the ability to strategically engage them (Jimenez, 2000; Solsken, Willett, & Wilson-Keenan, 2000) Furthermore, McCarthey’s (2002) series of case studies demonstrated how L2 students appropriated, resisted, and transformed school literacy contexts to suit their own culturally and historically developed sense of how to use writing to further preferred school identities Also noted was the importance of parents’ attitudes toward their children’s development

of biliteracy as well as the parents’ own educational and socioeconomic backgrounds (Hawkins, 2005; G Li, 2002; McCarthey & Garcia, 2005;

McCarthey et al., 2004; McCarthey, Guo, & Cummins 2005; Xu, 1999)

Other factors examined in relation to the effort to develop L2 literacy included the degree of respect demonstrated by school systems for the children’s language and cultural heritage (August & Hakuta, 1997; Reyes, 1992; Solsken, Willett, & Wilson-Keenan, 2000; Townsend & Fu, 1998) and the immigrant community’s success in maintaining strong intracul-tural ties (Divoky, 1988) Despite the evidence arguing for L1 literacy development and maintenance, researchers have documented evidence that recent obsessive testing programs, particularly in Texas (McCarthey, 2002), have forced teachers’ and administrators’ focus away from main-tenance and encouragement of L1 writing among young bilingual writers with debilitating effects (McCarthey & Garcia, 2005; McCarthey, Guo,

& Cummins, 2005; Xu, 1999)

Summary

In all, far from viewing L2 literacy development among young learners

as a simple matter of teaching and practicing L2 reading and writing in classrooms, over the 25-year period examined researchers have become increasingly aware of the complex and often unpredictable constellations

of individual histories, understandings, and resources and other kinds

of contextual factors, including social standing among peers, that give young English learners access to the literacy practices and desirable sub-ject positions that promote development of school language and literacy (Hawkins, 2005) Finally, Harklau (2002) and Elley (1994) have made explicit a previously implicit argument that second language acquisition research, historically focused primarily on spoken language, can ben-efit from more in-depth study of L2 writing and literacy development, particularly among young writers in elementary and secondary schools,

16 Contexts for L2 Writing

where literacy is an essential modality for communicating subject matter (Harklau, 2002) In this sense the study of young L2 writers potentially contributes not only to an understanding of literacy development but also to the field of second language acquisition by capturing on paper the dynamic shifts of young learners’ language evolution

of students and/or high schools, but also including questionnaire and interview research, some quantitative analyses of outcome data, and, especially abroad, investigations of pedagogical innovations But in fact this adolescent population has generally suffered from a lack of attention

to its writing needs in L2 (Harklau, 2000, 2001; Reynolds, 2001; Wald, 1987) Moreover, unlike the pervading optimistic tone of research on child or community L2 writers, the research literature on high school L2 students and their writing experiences paints a consistently pessimistic portrait of the overall predicament of high school L2 learners and writ-ers The qualitative focus of much of this research gives insight into the personal sadness, loneliness, stress, embarrassment at being placed into classes with younger domestic students, homesickness, and social isolation

of many of these students Most of the research has focused on students of Spanish-speaking, Asian, or Southeast Asian background; this distribution

of interest probably more or less fairly represents the visible secondary school L2 student population in North America

It is not possible to talk about writing research on L2 secondary students without first clarifying some of the complications inherent in that setting

Of all the contexts in which L2 writing occurs, high school is probably the most fraught and the most complex Its complexity stems from several factors In North America, high school is mandatory up to a certain age (though not free in Canada to students older than 19 [Watt, Roessingh,

18 Contexts for L2 Writing

& Bosetti, 1996] or available at all to students over a certain age in some U.S school districts [Muchinsky & Tangren, 1999]) This means that all immigrant teens, regardless of their previous literacy and educational background, are required to attend They cannot simply choose not to attend, as both tertiary and adult or community learners can And, unlike younger learners, the basic reality of high school English language learn-ers is their stark variability along several dimensions Although learners placed into the same level of high school may initially share a similar level of oral language proficiency (and sometimes not), the same high school ESL classroom may well hold students who have never been to school before at all, students with fourth grade L1 educations and little L1 literacy (Welaratna, 1992), some whose previous teachers themselves had little education (Garcia, 1999), students who already have high school degrees from their home countries (Fu, 1995; Muchinsky & Tangren, 1999), some whose education came from refugee camps, and others from elite private schools (Harklau, 1994a) Welaratna (1992), for example, described the case of a Khmer student who came to the US at age 17 after only 5 years of formal education in Cambodia, whose English at that time was limited to greetings, and who was placed into the sophomore year of high school

To understand how literacy development constitutes a central means

of educational communication in secondary school it is necessary to look

at the broader picture of L2 students’ experiences there If an 8-year-old English language learner begins school in the US having never been to school before, certainly the child has adjustments to make and quite a bit

of catching up to do But if a 17-year-old has never been to school, the catching up required is dramatic and in fact is unlikely to take place in the time left for attending high school Well known, often-cited research

by Collier (Collier, 1987, 1989; Collier & Thomas, 1989) and Cummins (1986, 2001) estimates that getting up to grade level for academic sub-jects in an English-medium elementary school may take a youngster 5 to

7 years, an astonishingly long time, and this is for children who enced normal access to education in L1 before entering English-medium schools Collier (1995) noted that even high school students with excel-lent previous L1 educational backgrounds studying in an affluent U.S school district who made steady progress each year had not reached the 50th percentile on standardized tests in such subjects as reading and sci-ence after 6 years of all English schooling, such is the slow pace of lan-guage and academic development for teens in an L2 Progress is variable (Early, 1989, 1992), but some evidence for certain L2 groups points to little development of writing skills between eighth grade and freshman

experi-year in college (Hartman & Tarone, 1999; Tarone et al., 1993; Valdes &

Sanders, 1998)

Writing in Secondary School 19

Language difficulties may coexist with sophisticated cognitive skills, and academic development grows with language proficiency (Harklau, Losey, & Siegal, 1999; Valdes, 2001) But the difficulties of studying in

an L2 are reflected in research comparing the academic achievement of international students studying at North American colleges and universi-ties who completed high school in their own language with that of L2 stu-dents who have graduated from North American high schools Contrary

to perhaps the common sense view, research fairly consistently shows the international students doing better This pattern holds more generally; the more time students spent studying in their native language high schools, the better they did in L2 academic settings (Muchinsky & Tangren, 1999) Part of this advantage comes from simply knowing better how to

do school, knowing what the school script is Part is building academic knowledge and understandings that can then compensate for lack of lan-guage proficiency in a way in which language proficiency cannot compen-sate for lack of academic knowledge and understandings Muchinsky and Tangren (1999) noted the example of an immigrant student who needed

the concept of narrator explained, whereas an international student is

more likely merely to need the word translated in order to grasp its ing Overall, the best predictor of academic success in college for these students is number of years spent in high school in L1 before immigration (Bosher & Rowenkamp, 1992; Cummins, 2001)

mean-As these learners are attempting to learn a foreign language and ing on learning content through the foreign language that they are still

work-in the process of learnwork-ing, they are also at the same time, and arguably toughest of all, coming of age High school years are a period of life when many learners are likely to be at the peak of their sensitivity to issues of identity (Harklau, 2007; Kanno & Applebaum, 1995) and peer relations (Heller, 2001; Ibrahim, 1999; S McKay & Wong, 1996), no longer look-ing primarily to parents for social and psychological support, as children might, and not yet formed enough to have a clear sense of themselves and their identities or to have developed reliable means of maneuvering in the social world, as older learners might Yet peer relations with domestic students are a pervasive and persistent problem for L2 learners in North America (Duff, 2001; Fu, 1995; Kanno & Applebaum, 1995; Lay, Carro, Tien, Niemann, & Leong, 1999; S J Lee, 2001; Leki, 1999; S McKay

& Wong, 1996; L Olsen, 1997), with language and cultural differences sometimes working against them (Heller, 2001).1 The high school expe-rience for these students has been described as “a social and academic minefield” (S J Lee, 2001, p 516) Research from the 1980s suggested that, by the high school years, students, at least in the US, self-segregate

1 Relations with domestic peers are an issue at all levels of schooling but the research literature suggests that these are particularly acute for secondary schoolers.

20 Contexts for L2 Writing

along racial, ethnic, or cultural lines and may refuse to cooperate across those borders (Kagan, 1986) L2 high school learners report that they are, perhaps predictably, ignored, laughed at, shown impatience, isolated, rejected, pressured to abandon home values, styles, and preferences (to stop acting, say, Chinese), and pressured to refuse target culture values, styles, and preferences (to stop trying to act, say, North American) (L Olsen, 1997) They may sense both the need to interact with domestic students and a fear of them and the culture of high school, sometimes including fears of drugs, sex, and/or violence In some cases second gen-eration and newly arrived immigrant students have fundamental differ-ences that cause conflicts within a single language or cultural group (S J Lee, 2001) Teachers as well may show impatience and prejudice against

English learners (Lay et al., 1999; L Olsen, 1997) For some L2 students a

confusing or limited and limiting set of identity categories may be all that

is made available to them in high school, with some successfully resisting the dominant culture of the mainstream to find identity links in counter-

or minority cultural expressions (Heller, 2001; Ibrahim, 1999) and others giving up, as reflected in the continued “abysmally high” dropout rate of English language learners (Hawkins, 2005, p 59) Furthermore, these immigrant students may have family obligations unusual for adolescents (e.g serving their parents as translator for interactions with authorities)

(Johns, 1991b; Lay et al., 1999; S J Lee, 1997; Losey, 1997; Orellana,

Reynolds, Dorner, & Meza, 2003; Rodby, 1999; Valdes, 1996)

But the issue here is not merely social; it is educational as well One of the persistent questions in L2 K–12 (kindergarten through twelfth grade) education is when to “mainstream” the students, that is, take them out of

an ESL curriculum and integrate them into regular classes with domestic students Arguments for continuing ESL support for as long as possible include the observations that L2 learners are more comfortable and at ease in these classes and so are more willing to speak up (Duff, 2001; Harklau, 2001; Valdes, 2001), some even finding them a haven, a “safe space” (S J Lee, 2001, p 515) in an otherwise intimidating institution; that unlike many mainstream teachers, ESL teachers are trained and inter-ested in dealing with these students (Youngs & Youngs, 2001); and that this continued support recognizes that academic and language develop-ment is a long-term process (Duff, 2001; Harklau, 1994a; Hartman & Tarone, 1999; Valdes, 2001)

But ESL classes, particularly in high school, have many problems of their own, prompting reference to “ESL Lifers” (L Olsen, 1997) and the

“ESL ghetto” (Valdes, 2001), an isolating, sometimes chaotic, tized, self-perpetuating space that keeps students in a holding pattern till graduation and focuses them on minutiae of grammatical form (Derwing, DeCorby, Ichikawa, & Jamieson, 1999; Duff, 2001; Fu, 1995; Garcia,

stigma-1999; Harklau, 1994a, 1994b, 1999a; Hartman & Tarone, stigma-1999; Lay et

al., 1999; Leki, 1999; Valdes, 1999, 2001) The notion of the high school

Writing in Secondary School 21

ESL class as a ghetto arises from research that documents students ing many hours a day in ESL classes and not mixing with non-ESL high school students except in activity-based classes such as physical education, cooking, or music, which make few language demands Although the situ-ation in North America varies dramatically by school district, it is some-times the case that students who enter ESL classes under these ghettoizing conditions simply never leave Even rooms designated for ESL classes are reported to be the leftovers, old, small spaces deemed not good enough for other classes (Schmidt, 2000) All of these negative features can, under good conditions (Harklau, 1994a; Walqui, 2000), be corrected with bet-ter ESL instruction and responsible administration, except one: isolation The protective shelter of ESL classes necessarily isolates L2 learners from their domestic peers and, at a time in life when peer interaction is cru-cial, the pressure to behave in socially appropriate ways (behavior that is learned through those interactions) may be at its most intense, and peer intolerance of deviation from social norms may be greatest

spend-In terms of language development, the high school ESL class has a dual focus On one hand, it must provide instruction and practice in the kind

of language that will promote expansion of academic skills (referred to

as Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency, or CALP; Cummins, 1986)

On the other hand, the ESL class should also equip students with the kind

of everyday language that would allow their eventual integration into high school social life (often referred to as Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills, or BICS; Cummins, 1986) Development of BICS allows English language learners to interact with their peers in ways that will promote not only a sense of belonging socially but also the language development and cultural knowledge necessary for academic success (see below).But the role played by oral skills in the development of academic writ-ing is complex in this setting Some L2 learners feel they require oral interaction with domestic peers to fuel writing proficiency by helping them gather vocabulary, develop fluency, and become familiar with the host country culture and current affairs (Duff, 2001; Kanno & Applebaum, 1995; Valdes, 2001) For these students, language forms may be absorbed and then first emerge primarily during oral interaction They may feel more comfortable writing if they feel they have enough oral language to allow them to do so (Kanno & Applebaum, 1995; Valdes, 2001) Those with an extensive education in their L1 may find that much of their L1 lit-eracy skill and academic knowledge transfers readily to L2 (Wald, 1987)

so that they need little or no help with academic work but expect that secondary school will allow their integration into high school social life and provide them with opportunities to develop L2 oral skills by facilitat-ing interaction with domestic classmates (Adger & Peyton, 1999).Ironically, however, since the effort to develop BICS often takes place

in the ESL class, it separates English language learners out from their monolingual English peers, the very conversation partners that BICS is

22 Contexts for L2 Writing

aimed at The issue then becomes when exactly in their school day the L2 students will have the opportunity to use these oral skills Some evidence suggests that in fact in mainstream classes, outside the ESL ghetto, L2 learners may engage only rarely in oral interactions with domestic stu-dents, who may be uninterested in L2 learners (Heller, 2001; Kanno & Applebaum, 1995; Leki, 1999) Harklau’s L2 students produced no more than one or two utterances a day, usually brief how-are-you exchanges

with a teacher (Harklau, 1994a; Lay et al., 1999) Thus, moving into the

mainstream gets these students out of the ESL ghetto but may exacerbate the problem of oral noninteraction (Miller, 2000), particularly for stu-dents reluctant to speak in settings that mix bilingual and monolingual students (Kanno & Applebaum, 1995; Valdes, 2001) Furthermore, L2 students may experience peer pressure from compatriots to speak their L1s and not English (Duff, 2001)

On the other hand, other English learners have little patience with

a focus on BICS or oral interactional skills in ESL classes because this kind of fluency building may (however appropriately) entail game playing

or story writing, which some L2 students may regard as inappropriate

as high school activities These adolescents may then become bored and disruptive or may simply tune out (Valdes & Sanders, 1998), criticizing their ESL classes for not only isolating them from domestic peers but also in effect infantilizing them through activities designed to allow them

to learn how to interact with those peers when they would prefer to be

developing academic language and skills (Derwing et al., 1999; Fu, 1995;

Garcia, 1999; Kanno & Applebaum, 1995; Leki, 1999; L Olsen, 1997) For students who are reluctant to speak, it is writing rather than oral interaction that serves to solidify an incipient, tentative grasp of language features and allows writers to try out and build on an academic vocabu-lary base that they can then use in mainstream or content courses (Wald, 1987; Weissberg, 2000)

Whatever the focus of ESL classes, mainstream high school classes also present problems for L2 students, and here the distinction between BICS and CALP blurs somewhat for L2 writing studies High schoolers are expected to begin to move away from strictly personal interests and experiences (discussable with BICS) toward the broader social world, a move which in high school requires greater knowledge of popular cul-ture, media culture, and news events, knowledge domains that are not strictly academic and yet may be essential to success in high school and become increasingly prominent as writing subject matter in secondary school (Duff, 2001) In addition, in an effort to keep domestic high school students interested, mainstream high school teachers may specifi-cally work at providing experiential relevance by joking, being sarcastic, using asides, and making references to pop culture and current events (Duff, 2001; Harklau, 1994a) English learners at this age then are called

Writing in Secondary School 23

upon to develop both the ability to manipulate academic topics and at the same time a familiarity with the taken-for-granted cultural background of high school peers in order to follow discussions in mainstream classes As isolating and sometimes stigmatizing as the ESL class may be, L2 students may feel equally isolated in mainstream classes, when they cannot follow the speedy, idiom-laden language and when teachers are too busy with high maintenance (Duff, 2001; Harklau, 1994a) domestic students to accommodate their needs

The nature of writing instruction in high school ESL classes is reported

as ranging from careful, supportive, meaning-focused approaches in which language errors are considered a normal part of the language learning pro-cess (Frodesen & Starna, 1999; Harklau, 1994a, 2001) to, unfortunately, more frequently reported ESL writing classes largely focused on grammar and mechanics, using such techniques as controlled composition or copy-ing individual sentences (Fu, 1995; Garcia, 1999; Hartman & Tarone,

1999; Lay et al., 1999; Trueba, 1987; Valdes, 1999, 2001, 2004) Sadly,

this approach to L2 writing instruction has been documented into the late 1990s and beyond (Valdes, 1999, 2001, 2004) It should be noted, how-ever, that ESL classes can rarely afford to focus on writing alone (Valdes, 1999) and that professional preparation for high school ESL teachers rarely includes specific instruction in teaching composition generally or L2 writing in particular (Diaz, Moll, & Mehan, 1986; Schmidt, 2000; Valdes, 2001) Furthermore, in a telling statement on the relative status

of the field, some of those asked to teach high school ESL classes have

no ESL training whatsoever, let alone training in teaching L2 writing (Harklau, 1994a; Valdes, 2001) Given this state of affairs, the continued existence of the old-fashioned, detail-focused approach to writing instruc-tion, highlighting neatness and grammatical accuracy, distressing as it is, comes as no surprise Its consequences can, however, be devastating for students, particularly for those whose literacy educations in L1 stopped early and who in effect need to learn not neatness, grammaticality, or even composition but literacy, that is, to learn literate behaviors and take

on literate practices (Blanton, 2005) Although learning grammaticality and even neatness may have some use, the implication of this research is that a real understanding of what literacy is must take precedence

On the other hand, in a long-term ethnographic investigation, Harklau (1999a) documented writing instruction in a particular ESL high school class that clearly worked toward the promotion of academic, composi-tion, and language skills, more so than the mainstream classes Harklau detailed in this study Ironically, perhaps, or perhaps inevitably, some students even in this successful ESL class felt they were not as well served

as they might have wished because they failed to recognize (or perhaps appreciate) the teacher’s fluency-building agenda (in addition to building academic competence) and as a result felt that activities meant to promote

24 Contexts for L2 Writing

BICS were too easy, boring, a waste of their time Furthermore, in another study Harklau (2003) documented writing classes in which the teacher, delighted with the apparent commitment of the L2 writers, encouraged the immigrant students to constantly replay the immigrant experience in their writing, constructing them as the “perpetual foreigner” or “exem-plars of ethnolinguistic identities” (p 90) rather than as individuals

In some contexts where the ESL class is intended as only a transitional class, once exited from the ESL ghetto, L2 students may find themselves tracked into low track English classes, often with a non-college-prep ori-entation The problems for L2 students there are the same as they are for L1 students: The courses typically make fewer cognitive demands, require little extended prose, expose students to only a few genres, focusing on ones that are supposedly the most practical but are least academic, and so make it even more difficult for the students to develop the kinds of fluency with academic genres and registers that might be required in college, thus condemning them to stations in life in which a college education does not figure It is no news that, the longer the student is in low track courses, the less likely he/she is to ever build the academic skills and knowledge that would allow escape (Harklau, 1994b; Losey, 1997) If L2 students then continue to have problems in writing, it becomes unclear whether the source of the difficulty is in language development or in lack of writing experience (Frodesen & Starna, 1999; Valdes, 1999)

If these L2 high school students do continue to higher education, they may find themselves at another disadvantage compared with their international peers In North American writing classes they are unlikely

to develop the familiarity with and understanding of formal features of grammar that usually can be and often are assumed in college L2 writing instruction for international students (D Ferris, 1999b; Harklau, 1994a), leaving the graduates of the North American high schools, at any rate, once again running to catch up

Interestingly, although writing is variously important to and plays different roles for different English learners (S McKay & Wong, 1996; Peyton, 1993), the outcome of all these different types of high school ESL or mainstream classes may actually be depressingly similar for all L2 students who subsequently enroll in college The research literature examines several cases of students who, after spending years in high school ESL classes, find themselves in ESL classes again in college, much

to their frustration (Frodesen & Starna, 1999; Harklau, 2000; Holmes &

Moulton, 1995; Lay et al., 1999) Such a finding reiterates the protracted

nature of L2 writing development but also suggests that this development cannot be the domain of the writing or ESL teacher alone Yet it appears that mainstream content area high school teachers have mixed reactions

to ESL students in their classes (Hartman & Tarone, 1999; Youngs & Youngs, 2001) On one hand, some teachers praise L2 learners’ diligence

Writing in Secondary School 25

and respect for school (Harklau, 2000) In those classrooms and schools where L2 learners are quiet and hard working and domestic students more unruly (Duff, 2001), the L2 students can be constructed by their high school teachers as exemplary, “an inspiration” for domestic high school students, and held up to their classmates as models to emulate (Harklau, 2000)

But on the other hand research also portrays high school teachers, with their hands undeniably full already, as feeling that it is the job of the ESL teacher to make sure that students are ready for their science class

or their history class, and that it is not their job to make sure that the course content in their science or history class is in a real sense available

to L2 learners Despite attempts to help mainstream English teachers and content area teachers provide appropriate instruction for English learners (Lucas, Henze, & Donato, 1990; Roessingh, 1999; Short, 1997; Trueba, 1987; Valdes, 1999), teachers may not know what to do, simply not be willing to do anything at all, or believe that if L2 students have been main-streamed this must mean they can handle the mainstream classes without further intervention on their part (Clair, 1995; Duff, 2001; Hartman & Tarone, 1999; Schmidt, 2000; Valdes, 1999; Wolfe-Quintero & Segade, 1999) Some believe that ESL students should be kept out of their classes altogether, with ESL teachers assigned to deal with them; still others believe that ESL classes should not exist at all because they pamper or coddle L2 learners (Harklau, 2001; Schmidt, 2000)

Furthermore, like their students, ESL high school teachers themselves may work in isolation from their colleagues (Harklau, 2001; Schmidt, 2000) There is perhaps some element of xenophobia and even racism in the behaviors and reactions of some of the mainstream teachers (Vollmer, 2000) But more generally there is an amazing failure of awareness on the part of, particularly monolingual, mainstream teachers and, more to the point, of administrators, of what is involved in learning a language and

of how they might make their classes more accessible to English language learners The highly politicized nature of bilingual education and ESL,

at least in the US, also means that the rules under which English learners attempt to study may change with the political whims of local leaders and populations (L Olsen, 1997)

It is perhaps because of the complexity in this high school context that

so many different approaches have been suggested, and tried, to teach L2 English in high school: separate ESL classes, bilingual classes, dual lit-eracy classes, sheltered instruction, content-based courses (Garcia, 1999; Valdes, 1999) The fairly depressing picture that most of the literature presents of the plight of L2 high school students is only partly offset by

reports of successful programs (Derwing et al., 1999; Faltis & Wolfe,

1999; Harklau, 1994a; Leki, 2001a; Valdes, 2001; Walqui, 2000) and courses such as the junior high school science class proposed in Moje,

26 Contexts for L2 Writing

Collazo, Carillo, and Marx (2000), in which students’ home and nity discourse would be integrated with that of science and academics.2

commu-More frequently researchers focusing on secondary students lament the piecemeal approach of school systems in accommodating L2 students, with mainstream teachers believing that the language and writing development

of L2 learners is not their concern but that of the ESL teacher and with administrations feeling they have done their job by hiring one ESL teacher and tucking these students away into that class, sometimes for nearly the entire day (Harklau, 1994a; Hartman & Tarone, 1999) However that may be, dropout rates remain high among L2 students regardless of their

language abilities and educational backgrounds (Derwing et al., 1999;

Watt & Roessingh, 1994, 2001)

Rare instances in the research literature of L2 teens successfully tiating satisfying identity construction, peer interaction, and writing seem

nego-to take place outside the school context, indexing a wide variety of forms

of literacy that students engage in on their own, for example poems, letter

writing (Guerra, 1996, 1998; Johns, 1991b; Orellana et al., 2003), or

electronic communications (Lam, 2000), non-academic genres bordering

on oral forms that carry little cultural capital in some academic settings but that nevertheless might in fact be a road in toward the development

of more academic writing genres But, because these types of literacies are extracurricular and as such imbued with little academic status, these students may still be considered non-writers (Hornberger & Skilton-Sylvester, 2000)

Summary

If research on the writing of this group of English learners is relatively sparse, it is perhaps because writing researchers have been overwhelmed

by the more immediate and serious problems observed in the contexts

in which that writing might take place The importance of writing and writing instruction is dwarfed by the more dramatic, threatening, and far-reaching issues these learners face and the seriousness of the other lan-guage, identity, and agency issues their cases present These students vary widely among themselves and enter into widely varying secondary school-ing situations Fu (1995), for example, described the adolescent members

of the same family all enrolled in the same school but with far-reaching differences among them in background education, predispositions, and

2 See, however, Villalva (2006) Perhaps, having documented many of the pressing problems associated with L2 high school literacy development, in the future researchers will be free to explore in more detail the characteristics

of positive writing environments It is notable that in this study of successful bilingual student writing the two focal students relied significantly on social networks to move their projects forward

Writing in Secondary School 27

interest in literacy and equally far-reaching responses from the different teachers they encountered in that single school Overall, the pervading gloom of the research published between 1980 and 2005 on L2 students

in secondary school suggests that, except for relatively rare cases noted above, in many instances L2 students and the schools they entered were not ready for each other Although it would seem that the clear but unmet onus is on the schools to accommodate the L2 students, whose attendance

is required, the schools have often been historically underfunded and sometimes ill-staffed, with perhaps the result that high numbers of L2 students vote with their feet and drop out